


Shall I Count the Ways I Love You?

by EvasiveCupid



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Drabble, F/M, Hurt Lucifer, Like for the WHOLE series, Lucifer Feels, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Whump, POV Lucifer, Protective Lucifer, Sort Of, Spoilers, seriously you've been warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26638768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvasiveCupid/pseuds/EvasiveCupid
Summary: He hasn't said "I love you."
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 33
Kudos: 180





	Shall I Count the Ways I Love You?

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooo everyone! I've never written a drabble, but I think this qualifies. I was struck by Lucifer's lack of "confession," should we say, and my fingers itched to write about it. It's... an interesting style of writing I've adopted here. Comments/Criticisms/Kudos always appreciated!
> 
> I beta my own work, all mistakes are my own.

He hasn’t said “I love you.”

He hasn’t said I love you, but he’s felt the blood of his brother on his hands. That warm warm blood, a fiery power source meant to keep his heart pumping. The crunch of bone beneath his fist. He’s felt the stuttering of the body as life twitched away in shudders and gasps, settling with unseeing eyes eternally closed to the world. To existence. The gasp of dying words. Eyes that would never again assess a pattern, lax fingers that would never push that dreaded key. Or, any key, for that matter. His hand is red, but he isn’t burning. It’s red, deep and staining.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He’s followed her when he wasn’t meant to, a cheeky paper airplane his hail-Mary of rescue. The immortal man now mortal, starring down the barrel of a gun, taunting. Buying time. There’s thunder in his abdomen, hot and bright like the stars he hung in the sky so long ago. Wetness bubbles along his stomach, hot and sticky. His lips part in a plea, not for himself. Never himself. He appeals to that figure he’d vowed to never ask for anything, prostrating his mangled body for service. Back pressed to cold pavement, limbs dragging him down and down until he’s falling, waking in that great ashen beyond. He claimed his command, indebted and chained, and came back again.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He’s taken her across the dance floor, all eyes on them, hungry and pulsing with jealousy. Yet his are only for her. He takes her up and holds her close, exuberant and joyful like she’s never seen. Like he is for no one else. Fingers interlocking, splaying, holding. Cheeks tucked together, stubble rasping. The floor is theirs, taken from the hands of short sequent dresses and button-downs and pressed into her own. He takes the stand for her father, flinging himself around the court room, risking his reputation. His name, which he holds so, so tight. Giving. He’s always giving, to her, for her, always.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He’s pressed the paddles against his chest, metallic and cold, and pulled the proverbial trigger. Felt his body lift and seize, heart hammering to a stop, eyes bugging, mind panicking. Traipsed through ash and sulfur before entering a door. Deceived a desperate man. That cold emptiness chilled him to the core, and still he wanders back, needing to return to her, paper slip tucked into his pocket. There’s a door calling, his guilt returning the siren song. He goes. There’s a knife in his grasp, blood on his hands, a voice long gone echoing in his ears. He sobs and breaks, sobs and breaks, and breaks again. Every piece is for her. He staggers back knowing she may not be there when he gets back, grasps her hand and believes in a mercy he’s never been afforded. And then he’s gone, leaving her, freeing her from her unwilling destiny even as every step tears him further apart.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He’s sliced open the universe, felt all that is and all that was and all that will ever be come apart under the blade. Took his mother’s hands, felt her fingers brush his cheeks, a goodbye of too little and too much. There’s loss and heartache warring in his soul, fortitudes of staples and glue crumbling under the pressure. The sand will swallow him any second now, he knows it for fact. Nothing else could have explained the sinking in his heart. He’d called her, ready to lay everything on the table, even if it meant another relentless goodbye.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He tucked a flower into her sweater and swept her across the dance floor, intimate. Secluded. He stopped sleeping with other people long ago, sheets cold and arms empty, waiting to be filled with her, her her.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He hasn’t said I love you, but he’s let a scream tear from his throat, searing his vocal cords. Tackled a woman to the ground as the biting pain of a knife in his shoulder let him know that he’d been successful. She was protected. Safe, her safety all that mattered. He’d stood and smiled and gripped the hilt tight, ripping it away, uncaring. Staggered onto the stairs as she pressed entirely too expensive napkins against his wound, held her hand there, afraid to let go. Worried about her. Worried for her safety, always, above his own.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

His being is a mess of patchwork and frayed edges, threads barely holding together. He let her go. He let her go, and she didn’t come back, and he’s screaming on the inside for the loneliness to end. But she was happy, and who was he to take away that happiness? No one. Not him, a busted bulb compared to her blinding light. He watched as that man, that ever-living man, knelt down and proffered forever. Stared as she accepted. Walked and ran and flew away, anything to stop himself from reaching and taking and destroying. He let her go, the person he held dearest in all of existence, without having to be asked.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

And when that person betrayed her, betrayed them all, ripped away a woman who’d unwittingly become family, he was there. He was there, arms tight around her torso as it buckled to the floor. He wrapped her in his hated wings without hesitating, and shrieked through the pain of shattering bone and gushing muscle. Felt every tear of feathers yanking free, stained red, red, red. Why did everything he touched turn red? He fell, and it was so much worse than a lake of fire and sulfur and brimstone burning away his tie to the Silver City, cutting off the choir of voices, the love of his siblings, the comforting warmth. It was worse, because she was falling with him, and all he could do was wrap her in those tainted wings and try desperately to fly. 

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He took another life then, feeling the give of muscle and bone throughout his arm as the knife dug through. Condemned the defiant life shining in those eyes to blister and burn.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

She’d rejected him, avoided him, betrayed him. Attempted to pour poison in his drink and watch as he guzzled it down, condemning him for crimes not his own. She believed a stranger over him, all for ruined skin and glowing eyes. She’d taken everything they’d built together and made him watch as she held it under water to drown. One more case, one more conversation, one more desire. A series of “one lasts” that endlessly rolled into the next in a stream of “never end.” He hated himself for her. Hated himself for them. Let the flames of abhorrence coil and croon about his heart until he couldn’t breathe through the smoke. He left everything behind, home and family and her. Her. So that she could be safe, they could be safe, and took his place on a lonely, cold throne for millennia.

But he hasn’t said “I love you.”

He’s back, prostrating himself before her, wanting to touch and reassure himself that he’s real, and she’s real, and everything is back to normal. But she pushes and cuts and breaks. It wasn’t real. What if it was? Then she’s back and he’s there, kissing and clinging and laughing. So full of joy. He disfigures his twin, he loses his powers, he becomes invulnerable. And still he is her shield. Her protection, her happiness, her wants, her needs. Everything is paramount, and he is once again a servant, bathing and kissing her feet, a king humbled beneath her grace.

He hasn’t said “I love you.”

But… Hasn’t he?


End file.
